No promises but a pledge

Mainstream media and politicians have been eager to promote the quick fix, to advocate technical tinkering to resolve a problem and advocate a whole range of policy reforms rather than seek a genuine transformation. Political leaders opt to fight battles over benefit claimants and immigrants rather than attacking poverty and inequality. They purposefully have chosen to fight the wrong battles to draw attention away from the real war – the class war. A harsh reality is that activism attracts seasoned political operatives who often use their power and influence to steer a movement in a direction that serves their own party-line rather than class interests or use protest to simply to advance individual careers. But there is the potential which now exists for a critical mass of people on the ground who are not content with tweaking the existing structures, and seek to push forward for a change of the system. When the working class get free, everybody gets free. It is no longer a workers’ movement but a peoples' movement – a social-ist movement

Capitalists want to rule our lives even if it impoverishes us and destroys the planet. They will do everything and anything they can to take more from the majority to have more for themselves, no matter how harmful. The rich have the media. The poor have no public forum but the streets and now the internet. Every few years there is also an opportunity with elections to raise issues and ask questions. Noam Chomsky was reproached by BBC journalist Andrew Marr, who demanded that Chomsky explain how he could know that Marr or any other journalists were self-censoring. Noam Chomsky responded that he never suggested that Marr was self-censoring, that he was sure that Marr believed everything he was saying. It was just that, as Chomsky noted: "If you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."

What Chomsky meant is that media organisations are made up of vested interests and those interests have little interest in hiring people whose interests don't coincide with their interests. Often, we forget this because some media personality seems likable, even honest. Sometimes this personality even plays the role of a dissident, criticising relatively obvious or corrupt targets while ignoring more fundamental ones. These popular dissidents serve to reinforce the illusion that the media, while at times corrupt, is not inherently flawed. That, in fact, there remains trustworthy watchdogs within it keeping us informed and holding power to account. You only need politics where there is a divided society, but in a socialist society we’d essentially be a human family.

Socialism means common ownership and common sense. The primary objective of the election   campaign is to deliver that message to as many people as possible. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we live in a deeply destructive world. People are beginning to understand that the policies and promises of the other parties are not going to solve our problems. Our campaign gives voters a genuine choice worthy of their vote in this system of bought and paid for politicians. We aren’t offering a mythical “kinder, gentler, more humane” capitalism. We make the case for getting rid of capitalism completely. We don’t need reforms, but an entire new social system.

Socialist Party candidates should be more accurately described as “mandated delegates” for our party does not have leaders or privileged members. The rule-book is quite explicit, [Rule 27: “Candidates elected to a Political office shall be pledged to act on the instructions of their Branches locally, and by the Executive Committee nationally.”]

Your Ten Candidates

Steve Colborn - Easington; Robert Cox – Canterbury; Mike Foster - Oxford West and Abingdon; Brian Johnson - Swansea West; Danny Lambert - Vauxhall; Bill Martin - Islington North; Kevin Parkin - Oxford East; Howard Pilott - Brighton Pavilion; Jacqueline Shodeke - Brighton Kemptown; Andy Thomas - Folkestone and Hythe.

If there is no Socialist Party candidate in your constituency, that doesn't stop you helping via the internet and social media. We are reaching out to people who are interested in socialist ideas and trying to draw them closer to our movement. Available for those who do NOT have the opportunity of voting for the Socialist Party candidates in the ten listed constituencies, a sticker has been produced and available on request for members and sympathisers to freely make use of as they see fit.